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Shipjacking
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:10 pm    Post subject: Shipjacking Reply with quote

It seems to me, if you've got a droid with the right programming (a high Security skill), that breaking into a ship ain't all that hard.

DJ didn't seem to have too much of a hard time jacking the smuggler's vessel in TLJ. He must have a high Security skill, and maybe a tool or two that gives him a bonus.

Maybe the droid can be fitted with a special gizmo that gives him a bonus, too.

I remember the skip jacking kit from the game, but I'm not so sure even that's necessary.

If you've got the skill and the tools, it doesn't seem like its that hard to take a ship.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 1:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yea, even looking at some of the ship securing tech via Galadiniums and the like, the HIGHEST i see requires a mere very diff (25) to break through. So someone able to get 7d+1 or more in security ON average should be able to break into most any ship..
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cheshire
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 7:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just a thought. Maybe what's stopping most skilled beings is not the inability to stroll off with a ship, but the ability to get away with it in any meaningful sense afterward.
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 10:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cheshire wrote:
Just a thought. Maybe what's stopping most skilled beings is not the inability to stroll off with a ship, but the ability to get away with it in any meaningful sense afterward.


That's a good point.

But, also, if you're a shipjacker, with a fence, those ships are worth a good payday.

So, you go to someplace like Tatooine and take off with a ship. A used freighter is 25,000 credits. Let's say the fence will give you 10%-30%. That's 2,500-7,500.

That's good money in the Star Wars universe, isn't it?





Or maybe the penalty for getting caught is too high--like horse thieving in the old west, where they'd hang you for stealing a horse.





If I think about it, how hard is it to steal a car in this modern age? I dunno, with all the electronics and stuff.

I do know that cars are stolen, but it's not an epidemic. I think, in my lifetime, that I've known maybe two people who've had their cars stolen.




Just rambling here with thoughts...

Maybe it's easy to steal the ship but not so easy to find and shut off the "alarm tracker" that blurts out a message every few seconds. So, stolen ships are that much easier to track.



Security alarm droids. If someone steals your ship, this small, stealthy little droid activates, moving inside the walls of the ship and outside it, though the machinery, where the droid will activate transponders and disable random ship systems until the droid is detected and stopped or the correct code is entered to stop it.
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 10:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How to jack a ship

use a boarding vessel
plasma cutting torch
enter and neutralize the crew/troops
make sure the boarding crew is large enough to pilot the ship
the pray and try to get out of dodge

if successful ship is jecked
if not then the poor sods will be breathing vacum
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cheshire
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote:

That's a good point.

But, also, if you're a shipjacker, with a fence, those ships are worth a good payday.

So, you go to someplace like Tatooine and take off with a ship. A used freighter is 25,000 credits. Let's say the fence will give you 10%-30%. That's 2,500-7,500.

That's good money in the Star Wars universe, isn't it?

It is a good payday. But it also means maintaining good contacts in a fluxuating world of the black market, or in the even more dangerous world of associating with insurgent movements (i.e., the Rebel Alliance).

Keeping up a steady stream of revenue without exposing yourself or your contacts also has to be a reasonable challenge. There's room for adventure and plot complications there.[/i]
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote:
[
Maybe it's easy to steal the ship but not so easy to find and shut off the "alarm tracker" that blurts out a message every few seconds. So, stolen ships are that much easier to track..


I think it's more that the ship has only one transponder, which is linked to the BOSS registry and pilot license for the ship.. So if not having that ship's paperwork, you are gonna be seen as a thief...
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Sutehp
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Adventure Journal 13, pp.132-165 has an excellent article specifically on shipjacking. It's half short story (starring T'Charek Haathi and her Special Ops team trying to acquire a new YT-1300 from a spaceport on Zelos II) and half game statistics manual on shipjacking in the D6 SWU. It's specifically stated that trying to legally purchase ships the Rebel Alliance needs would bankrupt the entire Alliance in just a few days. Moreover, because of BoSS' exacting records, such ships could be easily traced, which would render them useless for covert operations. Even purchasing ships on the black market would still be too expensive to fill the Alliance's needs. Thus, the Alliance has only one viable option: steal the ships they need.

Also, in light of Mamatried's post about how to steal a ship, it needs to be noted that what he posted was essentially piracy: force your way onto a ship, subdue the crew, man the controls, and get the hell outta dodge. But the AJ article shows that there's a MUCH easier way to steal a ship: jack it while it's still on the ground. Not only do you not have to worry about any crewmen, it's arguably a lesser charge if you get caught: stealing/grand theft vs. piracy. The former is (kinda/sorta) a property dispute while the latter puts lives in danger and will be looked on FAR more harshly by the authorities, especially if any civilians got hurt or killed during the shipjacking.

There are three levels of security that shipjackers have to overcome to successfully steal a ship: 1) physical barriers like guards, walls, tripwires and the like; 2) the hardware and/or physical protection of the security system itself (namely locks and alarms and such) which are dealt with by the security skill; and 3) security software, which is dealt with by the computer/programming skill.

The article then addresses what to do with the ship once the shipjackers get away with their booty. If the ship is going to be used for combat, there's no need to make the ship "legal" again because BoSS licenses tend to be rather low on the priority list when ships are shooting at you. But if the ship is going to be used for covert operations, then the ship has to be made "legal" in one of two ways: either find a really skilled slicer who can both modify the ship's transponder and slice into BoSS' database to insert the new transponder signature; or bribe a BoSS official into modifying the existing records of the ship's transponder from "recently stolen" to "everything's fine, nothing to see here, zoom zoom." Either way has its advantages and disadvantages, but both tend to be pretty expensive depending on either the slicer or the BoSS official.

There's also a blurb about the black market occasionally setting up a regular event known as "the Auction," which is usually set up by a crime lord or pirate syndicate where shipjackers from all over the galaxy can sell their wares in relative safety. Needless to say, that "relative" in "relative safety" needs to be highly emphasized because y'know, no honor among thieves and pirates and Hutt gangsters and all that. The security of the Auction is the responsibility of the crime lord sponsoring the event; needless to say, this sponsor is only going to reveal the location and time of the Auction to contacts he knows he can trust. Furthermore, the docking fees for the Auction are going to be lavish because hey, security isn't going to be cheap. Also, one needs to remember the whole "no honor among thieves" thing previously mentioned. Just because the sponsor is going to do everything he can to keep the Empire from finding out about the Auction doesn't mean that the Auction is going to be safe for the PCs, especially if they're going to be in such unsavory company as pirates and shipjackers and gangsters (oh my!).

The next parts of the game mechanics section of this article detail how to form a shipjacking team and what skills are required, followed by a lexicon of shipjacking terms and an adventure ideas section, and concluding with a shipjacking equipment list.

All in all, I really liked how this article fleshes out how shipjacking works in the D6 SWU. The short story about another one of T'Charek Haathi's Spec Ops adventures just adds to its awesomeness. 8)
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Last edited by Sutehp on Mon Apr 30, 2018 8:26 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Argentsaber
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 8:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cheshire wrote:
Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote:

That's a good point.

But, also, if you're a shipjacker, with a fence, those ships are worth a good payday.

So, you go to someplace like Tatooine and take off with a ship. A used freighter is 25,000 credits. Let's say the fence will give you 10%-30%. That's 2,500-7,500.

That's good money in the Star Wars universe, isn't it?

It is a good payday. But it also means maintaining good contacts in a fluxuating world of the black market, or in the even more dangerous world of associating with insurgent movements (i.e., the Rebel Alliance).

Keeping up a steady stream of revenue without exposing yourself or your contacts also has to be a reasonable challenge. There's room for adventure and plot complications there.

Just a thought, lots of ships in Star Wars seem to have two owners.. the smuggler and the hutt. Even if you can get away from the smuggler (who will NOT be pleased), you will have just crossed a hutt. Same goes for ships belonging to a tramp captain and a loanshark, an asteroid miner and his corporation, etc. You need to not get caught at both ends of the caper. Twisted Evil
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Sutehp
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 8:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Argentsaber wrote:
Just a thought, lots of ships in Star Wars seem to have two owners.. the smuggler and the hutt. Even if you can get away from the smuggler (who will NOT be pleased), you will have just crossed a hutt. Same goes for ships belonging to a tramp captain and a loanshark, an asteroid miner and his corporation, etc. You need to not get caught at both ends of the caper. Twisted Evil


In Han Solo's case, it's not so much that Jabba had any sort of ownership interest in the Millennium Falcon so much as Han had lost some of Jabba's property (namely the spice that Han was forced to jettison because he was about to be boarded by Imperial Customs). If what Greedo said was accurate, Jabba was probably just going to take the Falcon as recompense for losing the spice. In other words, Jabba didn't own the Falcon and was loaning it out to Han; Han owed a debt to Jabba that had nothing to do with whoever owned the Falcon and Jabba was just going to take the Falcon as payment for the debt. That's not the same thing. There's a difference between being a co-owner of a property and repossessing a property because of an unpaid debt. It's the difference between possession and ownership. (Yes, it's a legal thing. Just because you have a thing in your possession doesn't mean that you have a right to own the thing. If you have the former without the latter, that's called theft.)

That being said, however, as we see in Platt's Smuggling Guide, there are instances where a crime syndicate does loan out ships to new smugglers just starting out in the business in return for a percentage of the profits. More than a few smugglers have gotten screwed by that....

Also, can you imagine what might happen if someone managed to jack the Falcon from Han while it had a full load of spice? Argentsaber is quite correct that pissing off both Han Solo AND Jabba the Hutt (or people like them) at once at you is definitely going to have severe consequences....
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Whill
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 11:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sutehp wrote:
Adventure Journal 13, pp.132-165 has an excellent article specifically on shipjacking...

Thanks for the summary.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue May 01, 2018 12:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sutehp wrote:

There are three levels of security that shipjackers have to overcome to successfully steal a ship: 1) physical barriers like guards, walls, tripwires and the like; 2) the hardware and/or physical protection of the security system itself (namely locks and alarms and such) which are dealt with by the security skill; and 3) security software, which is dealt with by the computer/programming skill.


Going over the 'ship security stuff' i've seen in some of the books, Most of those phys barriers/hardware blocks are at most 'very difficult' to override.. For joe schmoe thief, that's sufficient, but not for skilled thieves..

Sutehp wrote:
The article then addresses what to do with the ship once the shipjackers get away with their booty. If the ship is going to be used for combat, there's no need to make the ship "legal" again because BoSS licenses tend to be rather low on the priority list when ships are shooting at you. But if the ship is going to be used for covert operations, then the ship has to be made "legal" in one of two ways: either find a really skilled slicer who can both modify the ship's transponder and slice into BoSS' database to insert the new transponder signature; or bribe a BoSS official into modifying the existing records of the ship's transponder from "recently stolen" to "everything's fine, nothing to see here, zoom zoom." Either way has its advantages and disadvantages, but both tend to be pretty expensive depending on either the slicer or the BoSS official.


One thing i've always thought about boss, is unlike the IMPERIALS, they are no where near as easy to find/bribe one, as it is with imperials.. And i never liked the ease of what many of the books seem to list for 'hacking in' your documents..

Sutehp wrote:
There's also a blurb about the black market occasionally setting up a regular event known as "the Auction," which is usually set up by a crime lord or pirate syndicate where shipjackers from all over the galaxy can sell their wares in relative safety.


One thing i've had one of my planets do, is when someone with a ship's arrested for various crimes, his ship can be impounded, then sold OFF by auction to pay for said crooks fines..
Another one, the MOFF there, LOVES crushing them, as a 'warning' to other crooks.. especially smugglers.

Perhaps that's a way to go.. You might get a decent ship at a cheeper price that way (kind of like IRL going to police auctions of confiscated cars and such). BUT as with house flips, they are often sight unseen.. So buyer beware.

Sutehp wrote:
The next parts of the game mechanics section of this article detail how to form a shipjacking team and what skills are required, followed by a lexicon of shipjacking terms and an adventure ideas section, and concluding with a shipjacking equipment list.

All in all, I really liked how this article fleshes out how shipjacking works in the D6 SWU. The short story about another one of T'Charek Haathi's Spec Ops adventures just adds to its awesomeness. 8)


Nice rundown. Maybe i need to look into getting that AJ..

Sutehp wrote:

Also, can you imagine what might happen if someone managed to jack the Falcon from Han while it had a full load of spice? Argentsaber is quite correct that pissing off both Han Solo AND Jabba the Hutt (or people like them) at once at you is definitely going to have severe consequences....


As a PC in Sparks, i actually got a 30k bounty from a hutt, CAUSE of doing something like that. Jacked a ship from a known imperial sympathizer. BUT that was before we realized it was shipping something TO Jabba.. So all of us involved got that bounty.. Took my PC a while to buy it off...
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